Posted on Sat, Oct. 26, 2002

Wellstone's plane gave no indication of trouble - Plane broke into pieces, caught fire

By Bill Gardner, Phil Pina and Jim Ragsdale
St. Paul Pioneer Press

Sen. Paul Wellstone, a fiery fist-shaking liberal fighting for a third term, was killed Friday morning along with his wife, daughter, three aides and two pilots when his twin-engine campaign plane crashed into a peat bog in light snow and fog while landing at Eveleth in northern Minnesota.
The Beech King Air A-100 broke into several parts and two major sections erupted in flames, said Gary Ulman, manager of the Eveleth-Virginia Municipal Airport. All eight people aboard the aircraft died.
Ulman said there was no distress call or any indication of trouble before the plane went down about 10:20 a.m. The pilot had notified the airport that he was going to land and had clicked his microphone to turn on the landing lights.
Ulman said he went up in a private plane himself to look for the Wellstone plane after it failed to land on the runway.
"I looked to the south and saw smoke plumes," Ulman said.
He flew over the area, thick with pine and spruce trees, and saw the plane's tail had broken off.
"It was engulfed in flames," he said.
Aborted landing?
The path of the wreckage, about two miles southeast of the airport, suggested the pilot may have aborted the landing, Ulman said. He said the weather was overcast with light snow and a temperature of 31 but was well within the landing limits at the airport.
Crews had to use all-terrain vehicles to slog through the bog to the crash site, said St. Louis County Sheriff Rick Wahlberg. He said the tail and both wings had broken off, and the fire was still burning five hours after the crash.
As always, Wellstone was with his wife, Sheila, who was at his side every step of his political career. His daughter, Marcia, also died in the crash.
The others killed in the crash were Wellstone aides Will McLaughlin, Tom Lapic and Mary McEvoy and pilots Richard Conry and Michael Guess.
The Wellstone plane crash was the most deadly in Minnesota since Dec. 1, 1993, when 18 people were killed in Hibbing when a Northwest Airlink flight crashed three miles from the runway during a night landing.
The NTSB on Friday dispatched a "go-team" of about a dozen investigators to Eveleth. The team, which arrived about 8:15 p.m., was to begin investigating at first light today.
Wellstone was en route to the 11 a.m. funeral in Virginia of Martin Rukavina, father of Minnesota Sen. Tom Rukavina, D- Virginia.
NTSB records indicate there have been 26 aviation accidents in Eveleth since 1965, including three in which people died.

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